The new Google Hangouts has arrived, bringing together Google's Talk, Hangouts, Voice, and Google+ Messenger under one app and umbrella. Google Hangouts offers unified, synchronized chat that retains history across all devices, allowing you to dig into your history wherever you are, delete messages, and check out files, photos, etc. Hangouts naturally includes the previous Google Hangouts video chat features, which allows multiple people to video chat with each other, again, from a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

Hangouts it now available on iOS, Android, Chrome, and within the Gmail web client. Get a look at the video promo after the break.

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Whoa! I never thought I’d live to see the day, but Google has finally decided that it was time for Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Docs to lose their status as beta products. No, you won’t find any changes to any of them. So, why the change? Well, businesses aren’t prone to rely on products that are in beta, even if they are five years old, like Gmail is. Look out, Microsoft.

Our favorite instant messaging app for the iPhone and iPod touch, Beejive (pronounced bee-hive,) just got updated to version 3.0. While there are a few nice additions, the biggest is that Beejive now supports push notifications on the iPhone. If you are unfamiliar, this means you can tell Beejive to stay persistently connected to Apple’s push servers, even when you close that app. So you can keep a conversation going, while you also check your email, surf the Internet, and more. If you get a new IM, you will get a text notification telling you so, which you can simply close, or use to launch Beejive and take you directly back to the conversation.

The folks over at Google Labs have been hard at work, trying to tighten the grip of your virtual leash, and today introduced a new way to feed the desire for instant gratification: SMS text messaging for chat. How often have you tried to chat with somebody, but they don’t respond because they “just walked away from their computer?” Well, Gmail chat will now send those messages along to your intended recipient’s cell phone so it’ll be that much harder to ignore you; and if you’re in the middle of a conversation you want to continue, but they need to leave their computer, you can now do that seamlessly.

Just go to the Labs area in Preferences to turn it on - you can type any US phone number into the search box in the chat window on the left, then select “Send SMS.” You can also select the contact you want to SMS first and then add their phone number. You can send messages to US numbers from anywhere in the world. If you’re on the receiving end, when you get a text message from Gmail on your phone, messages from each contact will come from a unique number with a 406 area code (406 spells G0O…), reply like you would to any other text message and the reply will be routed through Gmail’s servers straight to your friend’s Gmail chat window.

If your recipient REALLY doesn’t want to talk to you, it’s easy enough to reply to the message with the word BLOCK and you’re just out of luck, no more SMS delivery to that contact! If you’re someone who doesn’t have a text messaging plan or are limited in the number of messages you can receive for free, you can simply reply with the word STOP and you won’t receive texts from anybody using Gmail. Another awesome innovation that makes it that much harder to hide…

Tired of using emoticons to express what only your face can truly convey? So are Google‘s Gmail software engineers, hence, Tuesday’s introduction of Gmail Voice and Video Chat. In order to enjoy the new video/voice experience you need to first download and install the voice and video plugin. Once you’ve installed the plugin, to start a video chat, just click on the “Video & more” menu at the bottom of your Gmail chat window, and choose “Start video chat.” You’ll have a few seconds to make sure you look presentable while it’s ringing, and then you’ll see and hear your friend live, right from within Gmail. You can click the “pop-out” icon to make the video larger, or click the fullscreen icon in the upper left-hand corner for a more lifelike experience. “But what if I don’t have a webcam?” Well, Google knows the right people and is offering a few discounted models through November 30th. Check out the video (up top) for a demonstration.

Google Inc. and eBay Inc. announced today that they have reached an agreement to benefit users, merchants, and advertisers over our entire planet. Google will begin to place ads on eBay and will become the exclusive provider of text ads outside of the US.
They will also launch “click-to-call” advertising, a feature that makes it easier for businesses to connect with customers. As of today, “click-to-call” works this way: you provide your phone number, Google calls you, and connects you with the company. In the near future, Google and eBay will use their VoIP clients (Google Talk and Skype) for click-to-call. They will begin to test the two components at the beginning of next year for several months.

Meg Whitman, eBay Inc. President and CEO, claims, “By combining the power of eBay in e-commerce and Skype in communications with Google’s leadership in search and advertising, we can increase the usefulness of the Internet for shoppers, merchants and advertisers around the world.” Okay, but couldn’t you just become “Googlebay” and spend a smidge of the profits on feeding the planet?